Sunday, July 21, 2013

Definition Of A Perfect Day: The House Smells Like Bacon


Have you ever had one of those days where anyone else looking at it would think that it’s basically average, but you can see the one thing in it that proves to you that it’s almost perfect?  Well, today was that day for me, and the way that I could tell is that my house smells like bacon.

I know, you’re confused.  Pretty much any carnivore would agree that cooked bacon is one of the greatest scents in the world, just above the smell of Hershey Park or a New York City street pretzel.  But it doesn’t quite determine if a person’s day is close to perfect (unless you were eating the bacon, chocolate and pretzel simultaneously… sorry, “Fat Girl” jumped into my head for a minute).  For me, though, it does.  It means that I have a long run tomorrow.

Tomorrow’s long run isn’t really that long by any distance runner’s definition.  It’s the Queens 10K with New York Road Runners.  And I’m not really running it.  My goal is to exchange intervals of 2 minutes of running with 2 minutes of walking until I get my ass all the way around Corona Park and across the finish line.  I had actually signed up for a 10K in Central Park that was supposed to be today, but this 7 day heat wave caused NYRR to have to cancel that race and turn it into a 4 mile fun run, and anyone who registered got credit towards the 9 races they need to complete to get guaranteed entry into the 2014 NYC Marathon.  I found nothing “fun” about run/walking around Central Park when it was already close to 90 degrees at 9 in the morning, so I opted out.  Because I didn’t run 10K today, my healing foot is still ready to run that distance, so at the last minute I signed up for the race in Queens tomorrow.  So, not only did I not have to run in the sweltering heat, but getting credit for 2 races in 1 weekend (assuming I finish the race tomorrow) will bump my total up to 6 and has mildly decreased my panic of not qualifying next year.

OK, so back to the bacon.  My house smelling like bacon symbolizes a few things.  First, whole wheat spaghetti and turkey bacon (the Trader Joe’s stuff tastes just like regular bacon and doesn’t have the shoe leather texture of some of the other brands) is my pre-long run carb loading meal (complex carb, lean protein, and no vegetables that could be a gastrointestinal nightmare during the run the next day).  This means that I’m back in my training groove, even if only a little.  I’m behind in my training for the marathon in November, and I don’t expect to be able to run without walk breaks for several more weeks.  But, it reminds me that at least I’m training again.  This all might not work out. I could hurt my foot again which would knock me right out of my quest to run the NYC Marathon in November.  Creating a training plan that would accommodate me and get me from not running since April to being ready to run 26.2 miles in November was no easy feat.  But, I figured that if I give up now, then I definitely won’t make it.  If I go down in flames, I at least want to go down trying.

So, how did I ever come up with whole wheat spaghetti and turkey bacon (and if you’re cringing at the thought of it, you have no idea what you’re missing)?  Well, that brings me to my second symbol.  I’ve been eating some variation of bacon and spaghetti for decades.  There’s a cute backstory here:  when my mother was a kid in the 1940s, she was underweight and the doctor wanted her to drink milk, but she always refused it.  The doctor suggested feeding my mother bacon, because it would make her thirsty and then she’d drink the milk.  Now, my family which was not only Jewish, but at the time also kosher, didn’t know what to do.  They finally decided to take the doctor’s advice, but now they had no idea what a person paired with bacon to eat it.  Someone suggested spaghetti, and the meal was invented (and if you’re curious, the special pan that my grandmother bought to make the bacon without de-kosherizing the entire kitchen was housed under the stove (remember those old ones with the legs?), because my grandmother thought, “maybe God won’t be able to see it under there.”  True story).  My mother grew up on white flour spaghetti topped with butter and a few slices of bacon.  And when my mom had my brother and me, the tradition continued (though it never got us to drink milk).  White spaghetti, butter, and nice fatty bacon.  Yum.

Being a single, full-time working mom, pretty much the only thing my mother cooked during the week was bacon and spaghetti.  Otherwise our dinners were mostly pizza and Chinese takeout (and before you get the wrong idea, I think my mom was awesome and did the absolute best she could; if we could go back in time, I hope she’d do it all the same again).  And what happens when you feed a little girl basically nothing but pizza, Chinese takeout and bacon and spaghetti?  Well, over time she gets really fat.  And it’s only decades later when that girl decides to take control of her health that she learns how to eat better and proceeds to lose 70 pounds.  She starts eating lots of salads, and learns that an apple is a much better snack than 6 Chips Ahoy cookies (did I mention that my single full-time working mom was an employee of Nabisco for years?).  She learns to love working out, and to replace white spaghetti, butter and bacon with whole wheat pasta, a little olive oil, and Trader Joe’s turkey bacon that tastes just like the regular stuff.  She even learns that it’s the perfect pre-long run meal and that when she’s in the heart of marathon training she gets to eat it several times a week.  She learns how to go from “Fat Girl” to “Fit Girl”.


So, for me the smell of bacon means a few things.  It reminds me of where I started and how far I’ve come.  It tells me that I can change what I grew up with if I think it’ll have a better outcome.  And it tells me that I’m training again, which to me just lines up the planets again for the first time in months.  It symbolizes an ordinary day that to me is practically perfect.

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